Marquette University has two winners of prestigious Fulbright Awards

MILWAUKEE – A Marquette University graduate student and a recent graduate have been selected for 2015-16 Fulbright U.S. Student awards.

Danielle Klein, a master’s student in the Klingler College of Arts & Sciences, and Paul Brosnihan, who graduated from the College of Health Sciences in December 2014, each were selected for the Fulbright English Teaching Assistants awards.

They will be placed in classrooms abroad to help local English teachers while serving as cultural ambassadors for the United States. Klein will work at a high school in Madrid and Brosnihan will be in Turkey during eight-month placements that begin in September.

“Both Paul and Danielle will be excellent ambassadors for the United States and representatives of their Marquette educational preparation during their Fulbright Fellowships,” said Dr. Bill Donaldson, professor of chemistry and Marquette’s outgoing Fulbright adviser. “As English Teaching Assistants, they will have a great deal of contact with the people of Turkey and Spain respectively, and their outgoing nature and confidence will make it easy for others to get to know them as well.”

Klein, of Fox Point, Wisconsin, is a graduate of Nicolet High School. She received her bachelor’s degree in English and Spanish with a minor in education from Florida International University. She has been a graduate student at Marquette since 2013, and teaches rhetoric and composition on campus.

“One aspect that I’m the most excited about is my community engagement project,” Klein said. “In addition to teaching high school classes in Madrid, I will be organizing a book club for students that focuses on choosing texts that support Fulbright’s mission of global citizenship. I’ve already started brainstorming some of the novels and short stories I want to use, hoping to expose students to diversity of the world through literature.”

Brosnihan, of Omaha, Nebraska, is a graduate of Creighton Preparatory School. He was a biomedical sciences major and earned a minor in English literature.

While an undergraduate at Marquette, he taught English in an orphanage in rural Rwanda and was a teacher’s assistant in Omaha, helping Latino mothers become proficient in English. He also studied at John Cabot University in Rome, and plans on attending medical school and earning a master’s degree in public health once his assignment ends.

“I hope to work abroad in the future, and I think it would be incredible to help coordinate refugee camps from a medical/public health perspective to help decrease the disease and despair that usually go hand-in-hand with those type of conditions,” Brosnihan said.

From its inception in the mid-1940s, the Fulbright Program has fostered bilateral relationships in which citizens and governments of other countries work with the U.S. to set joint priorities and shape the program to meet shared needs. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is the largest U.S. exchange program offering opportunities for students and young professionals to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and primary and secondary school teaching worldwide. The program currently awards approximately 1,900 grants annually in all fields of study, and operates in more than 140 countries worldwide.

Marquette students who are interested in applying to the Fulbright program should contact Fulbright adviser Dr. John Pustejovsky, associate professor of German. Pustejovsky is succeeding Donaldson as Marquette’s Fulbright adviser.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.